A couple weeks ago I attended the Future of Making Things Event in Los Angeles, hosted by KETIV and Autodesk.

Why? I was supposed to be there! But more importantly, I was excited to be there. I was more excited than I've been in a while. The concept of the Future of Making Things is something I not only find appealing, but invigorating.

First of all, the event was held at the California Science Center. Just the location was enough to make me want to start building something!

If you've created your own content in Inventor's content center, you'll have to update it when you move to your next version of Inventor. Fortunately, this isn't really that difficult, but it's good to know the steps.

So in the interest of sharing, here are the steps that I used to update my own content center from Inventor 2015 to Inventor 2016.

In my setup, I'm using Desktop Content Libraries, which means they're not stored in Vault. These libraries are databases stored on my local drive. These steps are particular to that setup.

Also, I've already copied the files to their new locations. So really all that's left to do is update the libraries. This will make sure they're ready to be used by Inventor 2016.

Without further delay here's how I did it. I hope this can help you too!

In my adventures taking aircraft maintenance classes at Mount San Antonio College, I've learned a lot of things. Not the least of which, is how much I have to learn!

Another piece of knowledge I'm grateful for, is how to drive and set solid rivets. I'm not the best at it, but I can do it, and practice will make me better.

One thing about riveting has been indelibly etched in my brain. Rivets require precise holes to be properly fitted. So much so, that a rivet is often referred to by the drill used to make the hole it fits in.

For example, a "30" rivet is a 1/8 diameter rivet, and uses a #30 drill for it's pilot. A "40" rivet is 3/32 in diameter, and uses a #40 drill for it's pilot.

It takes a little while. So what it really took was a few minutes of vigorous typing and clicking, followed by letting my laptop be as it chugged along.

This time, I had the foresight to record my steps so I could share them with you. And while there are several options you can use to install your Autodesk Suite, here are the typical steps you'll see in your install.

I've been out of the office quite a bit the last few weeks. And while it's good to be busy, it has put a hold on my video creation schedule.

But as was said in the song, "we get by with a little help from our friends".

So with the help of the KETIV Technologies team, I have been able to lend my voice to a few what's new videos for Inventor 2016.

They're what I'd call "previews", but they do give you an idea of what some of the new capabilities are! I've included them below! And I'm still planning on creating more posts! Just give me a little time!

But take a look at these videos for a tour of what's new in the latest release of Inventor!

It's time to start my springtime upgrade to my Autodesk 2016 based products. And I've decided to share my upgrade process again. I hope that this helps you along your way as you consider your own upgrades.

Having returned from a trip to Arizona, I felt it was time to walk a bit more deeply into one of Inventor 2016's new features.

And I'm going to choose the automatic thickness detection in sheet metal.

In short, when converting a model to sheet metal, Inventor 2016 automatically detects the material thickness, versus the "measure and copy" method of previous Inventor versions. Check at the bottom of this post for the video version of this blog, or just keep on reading for the text version!

The process starts out with a part in the Inventor part modeling environment. In my test, I used a base solid, as you might see in an imported file. It's currently a "standard" Inventor part, and hasn't been turned into a sheet metal component.